The dream continues, say Argentinians directly inspired by Pope Francis

As an archbishop, however, Bergoglio transformed the curas villeros' ministry into an official vicariate and greatly incentivized it.

"He would constantly visit Villa 31 de Retiro, where I worked for 22 years, during protests, festivities and celebrations. He had a very close contact with the people. He would have a drink of [yerba] maté with them, visit their homes, have dinner with them," Torre said.

Juan Romero has lived in Villa 31 since his childhood and would often play soccer with Mugica. He remembers seeing Bergoglio in the area since the 1990s.

"We staged large protests against a governmental attempt to relocate the villa's residents in order to build a highway," he said. "Some of the slum priests went on a hunger strike. Bergoglio would constantly come to accompany the priests." 

Then-councilor Humberto Bonanata would lament, in a 2020 article, that the slum still exists only because Bergoglio called President Carlos Menem and begged him to maintain the villa in the same place it was created in the 1930s. 

"I still remember that he always had his cassock full of mud. The villa was very muddy those days," Romero said.

For people like Romero, it was "like Bergoglio was under the wings of Fr. Mugica," giving inestimable support to their community. 

In another Buenos Aires slum, Villa 21-24 de Barracas, a major ecclesial movement was founded in 2008, directly influenced by Bergoglio. 

"[Slum priest] Fr. Pepe di Paola invited him to the villa during Holy Week and he decided to begin with a washing of the feet ceremony," Romina Roda, a national coordinator of the Hogares de Cristo (Christ's Homes) movement, told NCR. 

That gesture had profound significance: It invited the church to put the poor at the very center of all its concerns, in a way that they should be seen as integral subjects and not as problems to be solved. 

"He would repeat to us that we should 'welcome life as it comes and accompany it hand-to-hand,' " Torre recalled.

Hogares de Cristo gradually became a federation of several neighborhood centers that work to give "integral answers to situations of social vulnerability and the consumption of psychoactive substances, by putting the people and their qualities first."

"Addiction is only the tip of the iceberg. We know that people are complex, as are the reasons for their problems as well," Roda said.

Hogares de Cristo's mission is to embrace the individuals living in vulnerable conditions, providing the necessary social and interpersonal support to help them rebuild their lives.

"Women have always had a central role in that process. Bergoglio gave back to us our voices and our right to take part in the decisions," Roda said. Even now, lay people and women still have a central role in the Federation of Hogares de Cristo.

Roda lives in the northern province of Tucuman, where 12 Hogares de Cristo centers operate. Although the situation in the province is very different from that of Buenos Aires' villas, the movement's model seems to function successfully there. She has been working with the Hogares for 10 years.

"Bergoglio knew from close the situation of poverty and exclusion that exists in Latin America. That experience gave him an extraordinary sensibility to understand what was happening in other parts of the world as well," she told NCR.

Such a closeness with the poor was a two-way street. Romero recalls the day Broglio was announced as the newly elected pope.

"People celebrated his election in Villa 31 like they would celebrate a goal of Argentina against Brazil in a soccer match. It was a tremendous party," he said. 

While Argentinians in general reject the idea of religious powers meddling in politics, Bergoglio's moral vision would continue to be central for many social segments, including in politics. 

Ultra libertarian economist Javier Milei, who once called Francis a "filthy leftist," won Argentina's 2023 presidential election. He was opposed by many social activists and political leaders who evoked the pope's teachings concerning the need to build just societies, in which the poor receive the necessary help to make a living. 

Not coincidentally, the most active ecclesial groups opposing Milei's anti popular measures — especially when it comes to the insufficient adjustment of pensions — have been the curas villeros and the Curas en la opción por los pobres (Priests in the Option for the Poor), a movement that directly descends from Mugica's Movement of Priests for the Third World.

The group had prepared an open letter to the pontiff in which they asked him not to visit Argentina. Since the beginning of his tenure in the Vatican, he experienced continuous pressure to travel to his motherland. His disagreements with Milei — which the politician took to a personal level, insulting Francis for years in interviews and social media posts — were apparently behind his avoidance to do so over the past couple of years. 

The Priests in the Option for the Poor feared that Milei's recent efforts to bring Francis to Argentina could succeed, so they made a long list of reasons — mainly focusing on the leader's neoliberal policies — why Francis should not visit. It was published posthumously.

In a message concerning the pope's death, the group said that Francis always wanted to show, "from the choice of his name to his gestures, with his words and attitudes, a poor Church, without luxury, simple from its language to its attitudes."

According to Fr. Francisco "Paco" Olvera, one of the group's leaders, Francis' death does not mean the end of his dreams.

"Never! We follow a crucified [man] who God took down from the cross. The oppressors will not have the last word, and in the meantime, [we must] stand by the oppressed with or without the pope of the people," he said.

That seems to be the spirit of many people who were directly inspired by Francis in Argentina. Slum priest Pablo Viola, who lives in Cordoba, said that the pontiff was not an isolated individual with good ideas, "but the expression of a church that went through a rich process over the past decades, and he knew how to interpret such a process as a pope."

"I believe God will not abandon us — and that dream will keep leading the church to walk side by side with the poor," Viola said.

Padre Willy and Roda also think that the changes Francis introduced will continue even after his death. 

"Of course, we're now shocked by our loss," Roda said. "We lost a father, but we have many brothers and sisters who were encouraged by that same father and will now sustain us."